MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 1

Morphological Awareness Skills of Second and Third Grade Students with and without Speech

Sound Disorders

Kenn Apel

University of South Carolina

Victoria S. Henbest

University of South Alabama

Author Note

Kenn Apel, Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South

Carolina

Victoria S. Henbest, Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology, University of

South Alabama

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kenn Apel, Department of

Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208.

Email: kennapel@sc.edu

Accepted for publication by Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools (1/30/2020)
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 2

Abstract

Purpose: Morphological awareness is the ability to consciously manipulate the smallest units of

meaning in language. Morphological awareness contributes to success with literacy skills for

children with typical language and those with language impairment. However, little research has

focused on the morphological awareness skills of children with speech sound disorders (SSD),

who may be at risk for literacy impairments. No researcher has examined the morphological

awareness skills of children with SSD and compared their skills to children with typical speech

using tasks representing a comprehensive definition of morphological awareness, which was the

main purpose of this study.

Method: Thirty 2nd and 3rd grade students with SSD and 30 with typical speech skills, matched

on age and receptive vocabulary, completed four morphological awareness tasks, and measures

of receptive vocabulary, real-word reading, pseudoword reading, and word-level spelling.

Results: Results indicated there was no difference between the morphological awareness skills

of students with and without SSD. Although morphological awareness was moderately to

strongly related to the students’ literacy skills, performance on the morphological awareness

tasks contributed little to no additional variance to the children’s real-word reading and spelling

skills beyond what was accounted for by pseudoword reading.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that early elementary-age students with SSD may not present

with concomitant morphological awareness difficulties and that the morphological awareness

skills of these students may not play a unique role in their word-level literacy skills. Limitations

and suggestions for future research on the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD

are discussed.

Keywords: Morphological Awareness, Speech Sound Disorders, Reading, Spelling

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 3

Morphological awareness often is defined as the ability to consider and manipulate the

smallest units of meaning in language (e.g., Apel & Henbest, 2016; Carlisle, 2000; Larsen &

Nippold, 2007). Researchers have demonstrated the powerful influence it has on reading and

spelling (e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Deacon, Kirby, & Casselman-Bell, 2009; Nagy, Berninger, &

Abbott; 2006; Roman, Kirby, Parrila, Wade-Woolley, & Deacon, 2009; Kirby et al., 2012). In

some studies, investigators have demonstrated that morphological awareness is the main or sole

predictor of students’ literacy abilities (e.g., Apel, Wilson-Fowler, Brimo, & Perrin, 2012; Nagy,

Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003; Siegel, 2008).

Students who present with combined speech and language impairments are at-risk for or

present with literacy deficits, including morphological awareness (e.g., Hulme & Snowling,

2014; Joye, Broc, Olive, & Dockrell, 2019). However, much less is known about the

morphological awareness skills of students with speech sound disorders (SSD) only. Students

with SSD experience challenges in the production of specific phonemes or clusters of phonemes

in the absence of other spoken language development issues (e.g., Farquharson, 2019). Given

that almost 90% of all school-based speech-language pathologists (SLPs) serve students with

SSD (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, 2018), it is important to have a clear

understanding of the morphological awareness skills demonstrated by these students. The

purpose of this study, then, was to examine the morphological awareness skills of a group of

second and third grade students reported to receive school-based special services for SSD-only

and compare them to age- and vocabulary-matched students with reported typical speech and

language skills. We also sought to determine how these students’ morphological awareness skills

related to and predicted their performance on measures of word-level reading and spelling.

Morphological Awareness Defined

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 4

In most investigations of students’ morphological awareness abilities, researchers have

used a general definition of the skill, such as the ability to consciously consider and manipulate

the smallest units of meaning in language (e.g., Apel & Henbest, 2016; Carlisle, 2000; Larsen &

Nippold, 2007; Wolter, Wood, & D’zatko, 2009). Perhaps due to this general definition, the tasks

used to assess morphological awareness have varied greatly across investigations, with many

investigators using one or two tasks to assess morphological awareness (e.g., Katz & Carlisle,

2009; Kirby et al., 2012). When tasks differ across investigations, comparisons across studies are

hampered because it may be that the differences in findings are due to the tasks themselves.

To address the issue of variation in measurement tasks, likely due to the use of a general

definition of morphological awareness, Apel (2014) suggested that morphological awareness

should be considered a multi-domain ability that involves the conscious awareness of both

spoken and written morphemes. Specifically, he proposed a four-domain model of

morphological awareness, including the awareness of:

1. spoken and written forms of morphemes,

2. the meaning of affixes and the alterations in meaning and grammatical class they bring to

base words/roots (e.g., -ed causes a verb to refer to the past as in walked; -er can change a

verb to a noun, as in teach to teacher),

3. the manner in which written affixes connect to base words/roots, including changes to the

spellings of those base words/roots (e.g., some suffixes require a consonant to be doubled

or dropped when attached to a base word/root in written form, such as in hop to hopping

and hope to hoped), and

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 5

4. the relation between base words/roots and their inflected or derived forms (e.g., knowing

that a variety of words are related because they share the same base word/root, such as

act, action, react, and activity). (Apel, 2014, pg. 200).

Since that definition was introduced, Apel, Petscher, & Henbest (2019) experimentally

demonstrated that morphological awareness is best described as a tri-factor construct,

represented at the levels of task items, domains (i.e., groups of tasks), and general morphological

awareness (i.e., overall performance across tasks). At the domain level, there were four domains,

each aligned with the domains suggested in Apel’s (2014) definition of morphological

awareness. This tri-factor construct, however, has not guided previous studies of individuals’

morphological awareness. In the past, investigations of young students’ morphological

awareness skills have relied more on a general and limited view of morphological awareness,

leading to the use of a task or tasks that represented only one or two of the domains.

Morphological Awareness Development in the Primary Grades

Previous investigations have demonstrated the strong relation of morphological

awareness to reading and spelling across a range of grade levels (e.g., Apel et al., 2012; Apel,

Diehm, & Apel, 2013; Berninger, Abbott, Nagy, & Carlisle, 2010; Kim, Apel, & Al Otaiba,

2013). A subset of these investigations has included students in the primary grades, given the

importance of early reading and spelling skills to later academic success (e.g., Hendrix & Griffin,

2017; McCutchen & Stull, 2015; Nagy, & Townsend, 2012). Across studies, notable and strong

growth in morphological awareness has occurred in the first through third grades (e.g., Apel et

al., 2013; Berninger et al., 2010).

Investigators also have reported that early morphological awareness instruction can

increase the morphological awareness and literacy skills of young students (e.g., Apel, Brimo,
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 6

Diehm, & Apel, 2013; Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Goodwin & Ahn, 2010). Both a meta-

analysis and a systematic review have demonstrated that students in the primary grades are apt to

notably benefit from morphological awareness instruction (i.e., Bowers et al., 2010; Goodwin &

Ahn, 2010), particularly students who are at risk for literacy deficits. More recent studies focused

on morphological awareness instruction have confirmed those findings (e.g., Apel et al., 2013;

Kirk & Gillon, 2007; McNeill, Wolter, & Gillon, 2017), demonstrating statistically- and

clinically-significant improvements in primary grade students’ morphological awareness abilities

and their literacy skills (e.g., reading nonsense words and real words, reading comprehension).

In addition to its relation to reading and spelling, morphological awareness appears to be

notably related to vocabulary (e.g., McBride-Chang et al., 2005; Nagy, 2007; Sparks & Deacon,

2015; Spencer et al., 2015; Tong et al., 2011). For example, Spencer et al. examined whether

vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness represented one or two constructs. The

researchers administered a series of morphological awareness tasks and two measures of

vocabulary, one a receptive task and the other an expressive measure. Across two studies using

fourth- and eighth grade students, the investigators determined that morphological awareness and

vocabulary were best represented as a single factor, suggesting that, at least for fourth- and

eighth grade students and the measures administered, they were representing the same construct.

However, Tong et al. found that the morphological awareness skills of fifth grade students with

poor reading comprehension were different from their peers with typical skills, even after

vocabulary skills were controlled statistically, suggesting some differences in students’

vocabulary and morphological awareness skills. Such findings suggest a noteworthy relation

between morphological awareness and vocabulary.

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 7

Taken as a whole, morphological awareness contributes to and is highly associated with

reading, spelling, and vocabulary abilities. Researchers have demonstrated that morphological

awareness begins developing early in the school years; further, morphological awareness

instruction in those grades can lead to notable improvement in the morphological awareness and

literacy abilities of students who are either typically developing or considered at risk for literacy

difficulties. Interestingly, there is much less direct information on the morphological awareness

skills of students with SSD. Some researchers have reported that children with SSD are at risk

for literacy difficulties (e.g., Bishop & Adams, 1990; Peterson, Pennington, Shriberg, & Boada,

2009); however, only a small number of researchers have directly examined the morphological

awareness skills of students with SSD-only (e.g., Apel & Lawrence, 2011; Kirk & Gillon, 2007).

Given the value of morphological awareness to literacy skills, it is important to understand

potential skills that may or may not affect the literacy abilities of students with SSD-only.

Morphological Awareness of Students with SSD

There have been a number of investigations of the morphological awareness skills of

students who present with SSD and language impairment (e.g., Joye et al., 2019; Marshall & van

der Lely, 2007) or language impairment only (e.g., Smith-Locke, 1995; Werfel, Schuele, &

Reed, 2019). In general, results of those studies suggest primary grade students with language

impairment, with or without SSD, demonstrate morphological awareness abilities below that

expected for similarly-aged students with typical language skills (e.g., Joye et al.; Smith-Locke).

Turning to students with SSD-only, many research teams have examined their phonemic

awareness (e.g., Bird, Bishop, & Friedman, 1995; Mann & Foy, 2007) and reading and spelling

skills (e.g., Lewis, Freebairn, & Taylor, 2002; Peterson et al., 2009). Findings have been mixed.

Some researchers have reported that students with SSD-only perform significantly below their
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 8

peers with typical speech on measures of phonemic awareness (e.g., Lewis et al., 2002; Mann &

Foy, 207; McNeill, Wolter, & Gillon, 2017; Peterson et al., 2009) and reading and spelling (e.g.,

Bird et al., 1995; McNeill et al., 2017); others have not found differences in these abilities

between students with and without SSD-only (e.g., Bishop & Adams, 1990; Catts, 1993; Sices et

al., 2007; Skebo et al., 2013).

To date, only a small number of investigators have specifically studied the morphological

awareness skills of students with SSD-only (i.e., Apel & Lawrence, 2011; Kirk & Gillon, 2007;

McNeill et al., 2017). Apel and Lawrence assessed 44 first-grade students with SSD-only on two

measures of morphological awareness and compared their performance to 44 age-matched

students with typical speech and language skills. The students with SSD-only had no reported

history of language impairment and scored below the 15th percentile on a norm-referenced

measure of articulation. One measure of morphological awareness, similar to the classic task

developed by Carlisle (1988), required the students use an inflected or derived form of a given

base word to complete a sentence (e.g., ‘teach’ Mrs. Smith is a ____[teacher]) or use a base word

of a given inflected form to complete a sentence (e.g., ‘trees’ I sat underneath the ____[tree]).

The students also were administered literacy (word-level reading and spelling) and literacy-

related (phonemic awareness) measures. Apel and Lawrence reported that the students with

SSD-only performed significantly poorer than the students with typical skills on the

morphological awareness tasks and the literacy and literacy-related measures. Further,

morphological awareness explained unique variance on the spelling measure for both groups;

however, unlike their peers with typical speech and language skills, the morphological awareness

abilities of the students with SSD-only did not account for unique variance on the word-level

reading measure.
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 9

McNeill et al. (2017) also sought to investigate directly the morphological awareness

skills of 28, six- to eight-year-old students with SSD-only. These students’ skills were compared

to, 28 age-matched students, and 28 students matched for reading abilities; all students were

matched for vocabulary skills. The students with SSD-only had either continuing or resolved

SSD. These researchers administered a task similar to Apel and Lawrence (2011) that required

the students to complete a sentence with its inflected or derived word when given its base word.

Additionally, they administered a second task that required the students to determine whether a

pair of words were related by morphological meaning (e.g., teach/teacher) or only shared an

orthographic form (e.g., corn/corner). Compared to their age-matched peers, the students with

SSD-only scored significantly lower on the two morphological awareness tasks as well as on

literacy (i.e., pseudoword reading and spelling) and literacy-related (i.e., phonemic and

orthographic awareness) measures. These findings were true for both students with continuing

and resolved SSD, although the former group performed lower than the latter group. The

students with the SSD-only performed similarly to the reading-matched students on all measures

but spelling; on that task, the students with SSD-only scored lower than their reading-matched

peers.

In a longitudinal investigation, Kirk & Gillon (2007) examined whether preschool

students who received a speech production intervention with or without a phonological

awareness component differed in their morphological awareness skills at eight years of age.

Specifically, one group of eight preschool students with SSD-only (Group 1) had received an

intervention aimed at reducing their speech errors as well as instruction in phoneme awareness

and letter knowledge. The other group of nine preschool students with SSD-only (Group 2) had

only received the speech improvement intervention. When the two groups of students reached
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 10

the age of eight, they, along with a third group of eight-year-old students with a history of typical

speech and language development (Group 3) were administered two measures of morphological

awareness. The first morphological awareness measure was a spelling dictation task in which the

students spelled base words and a derived form (e.g., enjoy/enjoyment). For the second task, the

students were required to determine whether the beginning of a derived word contained a smaller

word (e.g., fame/famous). If the student agreed there was a smaller word, the student needed to

state the small word and then whether the smaller word was related in meaning to the larger

word. Overall, Group 1 and Group 3 performed significantly better than Group 2 on the spelling

dictation task; there were no group differences on the second morphological awareness task.

Although these three investigations shed some initial light onto the morphological

awareness skills of students with SSD-only, much more information is needed. First, there is a

discrepancy on whether primary grade students with SSD-only differ from their peers with

typical speech and language abilities in their morphological awareness abilities. Whereas Apel

and Lawrence (2011) and McNeill et al. (2017) reported that primary grade students with SSD-

only performed significantly poorer than their peers with typical speech and language abilities on

all morphological awareness tasks administered, Kirk and Gillon (2007) only found this be true

for one of their two measures. It may be that the type of morphological awareness measure given

leads to different performances. Second, all three research teams administered only two tasks to

assess their student participants’ morphological awareness skills, and those tasks differed across

investigations. This latter fact may be due to the different investigators operating under a more

general definition of morphological awareness rather than a more specific, multi-domain

definition (Apel, 2014; Apel et al., 2019). A group of measures that represent a more

comprehensive definition of morphological awareness may provide a clearer view of the

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 11

morphological awareness abilities of students with SSD-only. Finally, not all investigators

examined how the morphological awareness skills of students with or without SSD-only related

to or predicted their performance on reading and spelling tasks. Apel and Lawrence found that

the morphological awareness skills of students with and without SSD-only predicted spelling

performance but not reading performance, unlike their peers with typical skills; the other two

research teams did not examine this relation.

Present Study

The purpose of this investigation, then, was to examine the morphological awareness

skills of a group of second and third grades students who had received, or were continuing to

receive, special services in the schools because of their speech sound deficits. Our specific

research aims were:

1. Do students with SSD-only differ from their age- and vocabulary- matched peers with

typical speech skills in their morphological awareness abilities on tasks measuring different

aspects of morphological awareness?

2. Do the morphological awareness skills of students with and without SSD-only predict

their performance on measures of word-level reading and spelling?

Based on findings from previous investigations (e.g., Apel & Lawrence, 2001; Kirk &

Gillon, 2007; McNeill et al., 2017), we believed the students with SSD-only would perform

significantly poorer than their peers with typical skills on our measures of morphological

awareness. However, given the well-documented strong relation between morphological

awareness and literacy skills (e.g., Apel et al., 2012; Berninger et al., 2010), we believed that, for

both groups, the students’ morphological awareness skills would be related to and predict their

performance on word-level literacy tasks.

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 12

Method

Participants

This study was part of a larger investigation of the morphological awareness skills of

students in grades one through six (Apel, Petscher, & Henbest, 2019). In the larger study, 224

second and 167 third grade students, recruited from school districts in a southeastern state in the

United States, participated in the study. Signed parental consent forms, approved by the

university’s institutional review board, were obtained for all participating students. According to

parental report, 16 of the second-grade students had or were receiving school-based special

services for SSD; none of these students were reported to have any spoken or written language

difficulties or hearing loss. Fourteen of the third-grade students also had parental report of

special services solely for SSD and no hearing deficits. The remaining 15 second and 15 third

grade students, according to parental report, had not received any special services for speech,

language, or reading/writing difficulties and had no reported hearing loss. Specific demographic

information for all second and third grade students is contained in Table 1. The students with

SSD-only were matched to the students with typical skills by age (within six months) and

vocabulary skills (within 18 raw score points). For the latter match, the students’ performance on

the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–IV (PPVT-IV; Dunn & Dunn, 2007) was used to determine

similarity in receptive, vocabulary skills. A Mann-Whitney U Test confirmed that the two groups

did not differ in age (p = .52) or vocabulary skills (p = .93 for raw score and .97 for standard

score).

----INSERT TABLE 1 HERE----

Measures
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 13

The participants were assessed on four different measures of morphological awareness as

part of a battery of measures administered in the larger investigation (Apel et al., 2019). Each

measure represented one of the four domains of morphological awareness (Apel, 2014; Apel et

al., 2019). Table 2 provides information on how each task represented one of the four domains

of the definition. In addition, each participant completed tasks measuring their word-level

reading (real-word and pseudowords), spelling, and vocabulary skills. These tasks are described

in detail below.

Morphological awareness measures. Across the two grades, each task had the same number

of items containing inflectional vs derivational affixes, the most common affixes (e.g., Baumann,

et al., 2003; Honig, Diamond, & Gutlohn, 2000; White, Sowell, & Yanagihara, 1999), and the

same number of multimorphemic words that represented the following relations, when

applicable, to their base words:

• transparent: base word was present both phonologically and orthographically in its

inflected or derived form (e.g., friend and friendly)

• phonological shift: inflected or derived form of the base word represented a change in the

base word’s phonological form (e.g., magic and magician),

• orthographic shift: inflected or derived forms of the base word represented a change in

the base word’s orthographic form (e.g., silly and silliness), and

• opaque: inflected or derived forms of the base word represented a change in the base

word’s phonological and orthographic form (e.g., busy and business).

Within the set of measures for each grade, each task used base words that were at grade level

(e.g., SPELL-Links Word List Maker, 2010; Zeno, Ivens, Millard, & Duvvuri, 1995), had similar
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 14

word frequency levels (Zeno, et al.) with ranges of word frequencies to ensure a range of

difficulty, and were not low frequency/rare words (SFIs below 30; e.g., Carlisle & Katz, 2006).

Affix identification task. Based on a task originally developed by Apel et al. (2013), the

students were provided a list of 50 written pseudowords with real affixes (e.g., ‘rinning’) and

given three minutes to circle all affixes (i.e., “add-ons”) they saw. The pseudowords were not

read aloud. Two practice items, with corrective feedback, were provided. Cronbach’s alpha for

this task was .91 (second grade) and .88 (third grade).

Affix meaning task. Using the same format as Mitchell and Brady (2014), the students

were asked to determine the correct inflectional or derivational pseudoword when given a

definition of the base pseudoword (e.g., “If edam means “sea,” which word means to go in the

direction of the sea?” Choices: edams, edamer, edamable, edamward”). This task contained 40

items which were presented in writing on a sheet of paper. Instructions and items also were

presented via audio-recordings. The students were instructed to circle which of the four choices

was the best answer. They completed one practice item with corrective feedback. Cronbach’s

alpha for this task ranged between .81 (second grade) and .84 (third grade).

Derivational spelling task. For this task, based on the work of Sangster and Deacon

(2011), the students were provided a paper sheet and asked to read a base word (e.g., luck) and

three phonologically-plausible word endings (e.g., -y, -ie, -ey); they then circled the correct

suffix. This task had 25 items and two practice items. The items were read aloud while the

students read along on their paper. Corrective feedback was provided for the two practice items.

Cronbach’s alpha for this task was .65 (2nd grade) and .71(3rd grade).

Spoken relatives task. This task involved a cloze procedure of 15 items (e.g., see Apel et

al., 2013) and was similar to a task used in previous investigations involving students with SSD-
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 15

only (e.g., Apel & Lawrence, 2011; Carlisle, 1988; McNeill et al., 2017). For seven of the items,

the students were provided a base word (e.g., farm) and then a sentence (e.g., “My uncle is a

____.) and asked to complete the sentence with a form of the base word (i.e., farmer). For the

remaining eight items, the students were provided a derived word (e.g., bravery) and were

required to complete the sentence with the base form of the derived word (e.g., “I don’t feel very

_____[brave].). As with the previous tasks, the students were presented with two practice items

and corrective feedback. Cronbach’s alpha for this task was .66 (second grade) and .75 (third

grade).

----INSERT TABLE 2 HERE----

Language and literacy measures. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–IV (Dunn &

Dunn, 2007) was used to match students with and without SSD-only by their receptive

vocabulary skills. The students were required to point to one of four pictures that matched a

word spoken by the examiner. According to the authors’ manual, split-half reliability for second

and third grade students ranges from .91 to .97.

The Sight Word Efficiency (SWE) subtest of the Test of Word Reading Efficiency

(TOWRE; Torgeson, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999) was used to measure the students’ abilities to

read single real words. The Phonetic Decoding Efficiency (PDE) subtest of the TOWRE, which

requires reading pseudowords, also was administered. Given the PDE requires students to blends

phonemes to correctly respond to the items, this subtest was used as a proxy for phonemic

awareness abilities. On both measures, the students had 45 seconds to read as many words and

pseudowords as they could. Across the two subtests, test-retest reliability, as reported in the

authors’ manual, is .89 to .93 for students between the ages of 6 and 12.
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 16

The Test of Written Spelling-Fifth Edition (TWS-5; Larsen, Hammill, & Moats, 2013),

was used to assess the students’ spelling ability. The examiner said a word, used it in a sentence,

and then said the word again. The students then were required to spell the word. This task was

conducted at the group level to decrease testing time; thus, all students were required to spell all

50 words on the test. However, each student’s responses were scored according the measure’s

basal and ceiling guidelines. According to the authors’ manual, Cronbach’s alpha is .90 to .94 for

students ages seven to nine.

Procedure

The students were administered three of the four morphological awareness tasks (Affix

Identification Task, Affix Meaning Task, and Derivational Spelling Task), the two reading

measures, and the spelling task, along with other measures that were part of the larger study

(Apel et al., 2019), during large group testing either in their classroom or another quiet room

within their school (e.g., cafeteria). Total group testing time took between 45 minutes and 90

minutes, depending on the size and ages of the group. At times, the group testing was delivered

across two sessions, no more than one week apart. The remaining morphological awareness task

(Spoken Relatives Task) and the PPVT-4, along with other measures from the larger study, were

administered individually in a quite school location (e.g., library). Administration of the tasks

included in the individual sessions lasted approximately 25-40 minutes and, again, was at times

split into two sessions within one week of another. The tasks were randomized across group

administrations and within individual settings. All tasks were administered by trained research

assistants. The students’ teachers received a small monetary remuneration to compensate them

for interruptions to their daily schedules.

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 17

All tasks were scored by two different research assistants to ensure accuracy. Interscorer

agreement for 15% of the total participants from the larger study (Apel et al., 2019) was 99% for

2nd and 3rd grade participants for the morphological awareness measures. Interscorer agreement

ranged from 92 to 100% for the standardized language and literacy measures.

Results

The students’ overall mean raw and standard scores (when applicable) on all measures

are presented in Table 3. As can be seen in the table, standard scores for the vocabulary and

literacy measures were within the average range for both the students with and without SSD-

only. In regard to the morphological awareness measures, performance was low for the Affix

Identification task. The average score of 7 (out of a potential 53-62 items) for both groups of

children suggests that this task was particularly challenging. Further, they responded correctly to

less than half (6/15) of the items on the Spoken Relatives task. In contrast, the average student

performance for the Affix Meaning and Derivational Spelling measures, which were in multiple

choice format, were above chance, suggesting some success with these tasks.

----INSERT TABLE 3 HERE----

Prior to conducting inferential analyses to answer our research questions, the data were

explored to determine their suitability for parametric statistics. According to a Shapiro-Wilk

test, some of the data for some of the measures (e.g., Affix Identification, Affix Meaning, and

Derivational Spelling) were not normally distributed (ps < .04). Thus, because our sample sizes

for each group also were relatively small and some of the data were not normally distributed,

non-parametric alternatives were conducted.

Comparison Between Scores of Children with SSD-Only and Children with Typical Skills
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 18

To address our first research aim, which was to determine whether students with SSD

differ from their peers matched for age and vocabulary in their performance on tasks measuring

different aspects of morphological awareness, Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted. Results

indicated no significant difference between the performances of each group on any of the

morphological awareness measures (all ps > .24). Effect sizes were small for the Derivational

Spelling and Spoken Relatives tasks (Cohen’s d = .31 and .32 respectively) with the children

with typical speech skills outperforming those with SSD-only. Effect sizes were negligible for

Affix Identification and Affix Meaning (Cohen’s ds = 0.009 and 0, respectively). There also

were no significant differences between the students’ performances on the literacy measures (ps

> .40).

Contribution of Morphological Awareness to Word-level Reading and Spelling

Our second research aim was to examine the contribution of the morphological awareness

skills of students with and without SSD-only to their performance on measures of word-level

reading and spelling. As a first step in addressing this aim, performance across the morphological

awareness measures were summed to create a composite morphological awareness score. Next,

Spearman’s Correlations were conducted for each group. Results of the correlational analyses are

presented in Table 4. Correlations among the literacy measures were strong and positive for both

groups, ranging from .71 to .86. For the group of children with typical speech, the relation

among performance on the morphological awareness tasks and the literacy measures were

positive and moderate to strong, ranging from .63 to .69. In contrast, for the group of children

with SSD-only, the relation among the literacy measures and morphological awareness scores

were positive, but weak to moderate, ranging from .41 to .62. Notably, the strength of the

relation between performance of the children with SSD-only on the phonemic decoding measure
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 19

and morphological awareness was .25 less than the strength of this relation for the children with

typical speech. According to a Fisher r-to-z transformation, the positive value of the

transformation indicates that this difference is reliable (z = 1.31).

----INSERT TABLE 4 HERE----

To determine the contribution of morphological awareness to word-level reading and

spelling for each group of children, a series of hierarchical linear regressions were conducted.

To provide some control for the impact of phonological awareness, pseudoword reading

performance, which requires application of an individual’s phonological awareness, was entered

first in the regressions. This was followed by the composite morphological awareness score.

Table 5 displays the results of the regression models with real-word reading as the outcome and

Table 6 presents the results of the regression analyses when spelling was the outcome of interest.

----INSERT TABLES 5 AND 6 HERE----

Results from the regression analyses indicated that morphological awareness did not

contribute any additional variance to the students’ real-word reading above what was accounted

for by pseudoword reading. Morphological awareness also did not account for any additional

variance in the spelling performance of the children with typical speech skills. In contrast,

morphological awareness accounted for a significant and additional 4.7% of variance in the

spelling skills of the children with SSD.

Discussion

The purpose of this study was twofold. First, we examined whether students with

reported SSD-only performed differently on measures of morphological awareness compared to

their peers with typical speech abilities. We also determined whether the morphological

awareness skills of both groups were related to, and explained unique variance on, norm-
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 20

referenced measures of real-word reading and spelling. We anticipated that we would find

differences between the two groups in their morphological awareness skills. We also believed

that the morphological awareness skills of all students would relate to and predict their reading

and spelling abilities. In both cases, our hypotheses regarding each research question were not

supported. There appear to be several reasons for the incongruity between our hypotheses and

our actual findings.

On all measures of morphological awareness, there were no significant differences

between the performances of the students with and without SSD-only. Although these findings

were contrary to what we expected and that have been reported by some researchers (e.g., Apel

& Lawrence, 2011; McNeill et al., 2017), they were consistent with other reported findings on

the morphological awareness abilities of students with SSD-only (i.e., Kirk & Gillon, 2007;

McNeill et al. 2017). For example, Apel and Lawrence as well as McNeill et al. reported that

their elementary-age students with SSD-only performed significantly poorer than age-matched

peers on morphological awareness tasks as well norm-referenced measures of reading and

spelling. However, students with SSD-only performed similarly to their reading-matched peers

on morphological awareness measures (McNeill et al.). Although we matched the students with

and without SSD-only on age and vocabulary, when we examined the word-level reading skills,

we found no significant differences between the two groups. Thus, it seems that when students

with SSD-only have similar reading skills as their peers with typical speech abilities, their

morphological awareness skills are commensurate as well. This finding is not all that surprising

given the important role morphological awareness plays in reading and spelling development

(e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Deacon et al., 2009; Roman et al., 2009).

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 21

The similar level of morphological awareness skills found between students with and

without SSD-only also may have occurred because the two groups were matched for vocabulary.

Our decision to match the groups by spoken vocabulary abilities was to ensure that neither group

demonstrated below age expectations in an area of spoken language. Given that past reports

suggest that students with language impairment, with or without a concomitant SSD, perform

lower than their peers with typical speech and language skills on literacy and literacy-related

measures (Joye et al., 2019; Werfel et al., 2019), we chose to ensure our students with SSD only

presented with speech difficulties. However, researchers have demonstrated the close relation

between vocabulary and morphological awareness (e.g., Nagy, 2007; Tong et al., 2011). Thus, it

may be that the corresponding level of vocabulary skills between the two groups served as a

proxy for their morphological awareness skills. In the future, researchers may wish to include

groups of students with and without SSD that are matched by age and language ability using a

measure of spoken language ability other than vocabulary.

Our findings about the similarity in morphological awareness skills between students

with and without SSD-only also reflects the outcomes of some studies of the phonemic

awareness, reading, and spelling skills of students with SSD-only (e.g., Bishop & Adams, 1990;

Catts, 1993; Sices et al., 207; Skebo et al., 2013). For example, Sices et al. reported that their

three- to six-year-old children with moderate to severe SSD performed significantly lower than

typical limits on norm-referenced measures of reading and writing readiness when a language

impairment accompanied the SSD; severity of SSD did not account for lower performance on the

literacy tasks when spoken language skills were taken into account. Findings from Skebo et al.

were similar. For students with SSD-only, unlike their counterparts with SSD and language

impairment, vocabulary predicted their word-level reading and reading comprehension skills. For
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 22

the students with SSD and language impairment, “overall language abilities” (i.e., performance

on the Clinical Evaluation of Fundamentals-Third Edition; Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 1995)

predicted the students’ reading abilities. Thus, across studies of the literacy and linguistic

awareness skills of students with SSD-only, it may be that these abilities resemble those of their

peers with typical speech and language skills when spoken language skills are within the typical

range.

The fact that the morphological awareness skills were no different than those of students

with typical speech abilities may be due partially to SLPs’ growing awareness of the importance

of integrating linguistic awareness activities into their speech services. For some time now,

research has shown that the integration of phonemic awareness activities into the treatment of

speech disorders leads to positive outcomes for both speech and phonemic awareness (e.g.,

Gillon, 2005; Kirk & Gillon, 2007). More recently, research suggests that SLPs also are aware of

the importance of morphological awareness and, indeed, are integrating morphological

awareness activities into their speech and language interventions (Good, 2019). In a recent

survey of 105 SLPs, Good found that the majority of respondents (83.5%) reported they

addressed morphological awareness as part of the services they provided to their clients (. With

SLPs’ increased attention to morphological awareness, it may be that students with SSD-only are

improving in their morphological awareness skills concomitantly with improvements in their

speech abilities. In the future, researchers could examine the impact of an integrated speech

sound and morphological awareness intervention on morphological awareness abilities.

We also examined whether the morphological awareness skills of students with and

without SSD-only related to and accounted for unique variance in their performance on real-

word reading and spelling measures. We examined the contributions of the students’
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 23

morphological awareness skills, along with their performance on a pseudoword reading task

which served as a proxy measure for phonemic awareness. The pseudoword reading measure

was the sole contributor to all students’ performance on the real-word reading task. This outcome

may be related to the reading task itself. Given the age of the students and the testing starting

point on the task, the real-word reading measure contained few words that were

multimorphemic. It may be, then, that the lower demands for the use of morphological awareness

to recognize words resulted in the lack of contributions of morphological awareness to real-word

reading.

Although morphological awareness did not relate to or account for additional variance

beyond pseudoword reading for the students with typical skills on the spelling task, it was

associated with and explained additional variance, above pseudoword reading, for the students

with SSD-only. Apel and Lawrence (2011) reported a similar finding for their students with

SSD-only. The differences we found for how morphological awareness contributes to spelling

between our two student groups are interesting. First, as with the reading task, the students

encountered few multimorphemic spelling words. Thus, our expectation was that similar findings

to the real-word reading regressions would be found. It may be the difference in the contributions

of morphological awareness to spelling between the groups was due to their performance on the

pseudoword reading tasks and its contributions to spelling performance. For the students with

SSD-only, the relation between their performance on the pseudoword reading task and the

morphological awareness composite score was notably weaker than that relation for students

with typical skills. Further, the performance on the pseudoword reading task for the students with

SSD-only was slightly lower than that of the students with typical skills, contributing

approximately 66% to their performance on the spelling task. These students’ morphological
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 24

awareness abilities contributed another 4%. Thus, both variables accounted for 70% of the

students’ performance in spelling. However, for the students with typical language skills,

pseudoword reading explained almost 79% of their spelling performance, a much larger

contribution than that of the pseudoword reading skills of the students with SSD-only. Thus,

there was less variance to explain on their spelling performance. It would be useful in the future

to determine whether similar outcomes occur when a standard measure of phonemic awareness is

used.

To ensure our morphological awareness tasks represented our definition of morphological

awareness, we used four different tasks, representing each of the four domains of the definition.

To prepare for the regression analyses completed, we conducted correlational analyses that

determined the relation among those four tasks as well as between each morphological

awareness task and the reading and spelling measures. As can be seen in Table 4, two of the

morphological awareness tasks significantly and moderately correlated with each other (the

Affix Meaning and Derivational Spelling tasks; correlation coefficient = .42). The other two

morphological awareness tasks did not correlate with any of the other morphological awareness

measures. The finding that all the morphological awareness tasks did not significantly correlate

with each other was not surprising given that Apel et al. (2019) found that morphological

awareness was best described as a tri-factor construct (i.e., the task domain and the general

morphological awareness levels). The tri-factor model supported four domains, commensurate

with our definition of morphological awareness. Importantly, in that model, the four domains

were not related to each other; instead, they related to the overall or general level of

morphological awareness. Because of the model, then, we combined the tasks representing the

four domains into a general measure of morphological awareness that was used for the regression
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 25

analyses. In future studies, researchers could use different morphological awareness tasks

representing the four domains to determine whether the different tasks affect the relation

between the measures themselves as well as between the individual measures and reading and

spelling tasks.

There are several limitations to this study that are important to note. First, the students

with SSD were identified by parent report; a second source of information, such as results on a

standardized articulation task, were not implemented. Although other research teams have used

parental report as a means of identifying SSD (e.g., Peterson et al., 2009), future investigations

may wish to duplicate our procedures using students with SSD who have more than one source

confirming the presence of a SSD. Second, we did not differentiate whether students were

currently receiving speech services or the level of severity of the speech difficulties. Some

researchers have suggested that differences in whether a SSD is resolved or unresolved and that

the severity of the SSD may lead to differences in literacy and literacy-related outcomes (e.g.,

McNeill et al., 2017; Peterson et al., 2009); others report no differences based on resolution of

the disorder or its severity (e.g., Farquharson, 2019; Skebo et al., 2013). A future investigation

that addresses these potential influencing factors on morphological awareness abilities might

shed additional light on the morphological awareness skills of students with SSD. Finally, our

sample size was relatively small. Different results may have occurred with larger group sizes.

In summary, our findings suggest that the morphological awareness abilities of early

elementary-age students with SSD-only are commensurate with those of same-age students with

typical speech skills. In addition, for both students with and without a SSD, morphological

awareness appears to contribute little to no variance on reading and spelling skills, above the

contribution of pseudoword reading. Our findings may be due to increased awareness of SLPs
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 26

on the importance of phonemic and morphological awareness and their integration into speech

intervention activities. SLPs should continue to address the phonological awareness and

morphological awareness skills of the students on their caseloads with a SSD and/or concomitant

language disorder. With such a focus, SLPs may be able to decrease the at-risk nature of students

with SSD for later reading and spelling difficulties. Acknowledgments

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 27

Acknowledgement

The research reported here was supported by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S.

Department of Education, through Grant R305A170065 the University of South Carolina. The

opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute or the U.S.

Department of Education.
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 28

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MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 36

Table 1. Participant Demographics

Students with Speech Student with Typical Total

Sound Disorders Speech Sample
Characteristic
2nd Grade 3rd Grade 2nd Grade 3rd Grade
Male/Female 9/7 7/7 6/9 7/8 29/31

Mean Age 7.91 8.87 8.0 8.93 8.43

Ethnicity:
Caucasian 7 11 7 8 33

African American 7 2 5 4 18
Hispanic 1 1 2

Asian 1 1 2

Native American 1 1
Multi-racial 2 1 3

No response/Prefer Not 1 1
to Answer
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 37

Table 2. Tasks Administered

Task Component of Definition

Segmenting Task Awareness of spoken and written morphemes

Affix Meaning Task Awareness of the meaning of affixes and the

alterations in meaning and grammatical class they
bring to base words

Derivational Spelling Task Awareness of the manner in which written affixes

connect to base words, including changes to those
base words

Spoken Relatives Task Awareness of the relation between base words and
their inflected or derived forms
 MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 38

Table 3. Mean Raw and Standard Scores (when applicable) for Measures of Language, Literacy, and

Morphological Awareness

Measure Children with SSD Children with Typical Speech

Spoken Language:
Raw Score Standard Score Raw Score Standard Score
PPVT-4 137.10 (23.76) 104.40 (16.10) 138.33 (22.73) 104.63 (15.40)

Literacy:
TOWRE-2 SWE 55.10 (14.95) 98.50 (15.34) 55.67 (14.54) 97.13 (15.91)

TOWRE-2 PDE 23.03 (13.65) 91.40 (18.68) 25.10 (13.56) 94.33 (17.33)

TWS-5 17.10 (8.15) 94.97 (21.47) 18.83 (7.34) 97.73 (15.24)

Morphological
Awareness:
Affix Identification 7.27 (8.81) n/a 7.20 (6.32) n/a
(varied)*
Affix Meaning 17.47 (7.68) n/a 17.47 (7.31) n/a
(40)
Derivational Spelling 14.10 (4.05) n/a 15.23 (3.31) n/a
(25)
Spoken Relatives 6.03 (2.47) n/a 6.90 (2.91) n/a
(15)

Note. PPVT-4 = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-4th Edition; TOWRE-2 SWE = Test of Word

Reading Efficiency-2nd Edition Sight Word Efficiency; TOWRE-2 PDE = Test of Word Reading

Efficiency-2nd Edition Phonemic Decoding Efficiency; For Morphological Awareness measures, the

number in parentheses next to task name represents the total number of items (i.e., possible points) for

that task; *The Affix Identification task was timed so the total number of items varied across

participants. Standard deviations for raw and standard scores are in parentheses.
 MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 39

Table 4. Spearman Correlations for Measures of Word-level Reading and Spelling and
Morphological Awareness

Measure TOWRE-2 TOWRE-2 TWS Morphological

(SWE) (PDE) -5 Awareness
TOWRE-2 (SWE) .84** .71** .63**

TOWRE-2 (PDE) .85** .86** .66**

TWS-5 .81** .82** .69**

Morphological .56** .41* .62**

Awareness

Note. Coefficients for Students with Typical Speech Skills are above diagonal and below the

diagonal for Students with SSDs; TOWRE-2 (SWE) = Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2nd

Edition (Sight Word Efficiency); TOWRE-2 (PDE) = Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2nd

Edition (Phonemic Decoding Efficiency); TWS-5 = Test of Written Spelling-5th Edition

** p < .01; *p < .05

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 40

Table 5. Regression Analysis for Prediction of Performance on Real- Word Reading (TOWRE-2,

SWE) for Children with Typical Speech and Children with SSDs

Variables R2 Adjusted R² ΔR² F β p df

Children with Typical Speech

Step 1

.675 .663 .675 58.087 .821 <.001 (1, 28)

TOWRE-2 PDE
Step 2

.688 .665 .014 1.173 .145 .288 (1, 27)

Morphological Awareness

Children with SSDs

Step 1

.696 .685 .696 64.148 .834 <.001 (1, 28)

TOWRE-2 PDE
Step 2

.722 .702 .026 2.54 .182 .123 (1, 27)

Morphological Awareness

Note. ΔR² = change in R²; TWS-5 = Test of Written Spelling-5th Edition; TOWRE-2 (PDE) =

Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2nd Edition (Phonemic Decoding Efficiency).

MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS 41

Table 6. Regression Analysis for Prediction of Performance on Word- Level Spelling (TWS-5)

for Children with Typical Speech and Children with SSDs

Variables R2 Adjusted R² ΔR² F β p df

Children with Typical Speech

Step 1

TOWRE-2 PDE .792 .785 .792 106.811 .890 <.001 (1, 28)
Step 2

Morphological Awareness .800 .785 .008 1.023 .109 .321 (1, 27)

Children with SSDs

Step 1

TOWRE-2 PDE .671 .659 .671 57.103 .819 <.001 (1, 28)
Step 2

Morphological Awareness .718 .697 .047 4.488 .244 .043 (1, 27)

Note. ΔR² = change in R²; TWS-5 = Test of Written Spelling-5th Edition; TOWRE-2 (PDE) =

Test of Word Reading Efficiency-2nd Edition (Phonemic Decoding Efficiency).